A look through my mind….. the mind of an Aspie…

I took a break from writing for a little while. More like I have been mentally overwhelmed.  That happens to me a lot and the way I cope is I kind of withdraw.  The crazy thing is I love to write, but when I get overwhelmed with things I don’t have the energy to put the words from my head to paper where they make sense 😦

Things can get to be too much for me mentally and it gets to the point where I can only cope with the basics. I have almost always been like this. Makes life hard sometimes….

I learn how to handle the important things going on in life and I can manage ok, sometimes even well. But when something goes wrong, a crisis, some things change, or some things come along on top of what is already going on that are extra, well then that is when I often can’t handle it and can’t cope. This is often when I crumble.

That is what has been going on the last couple months.  The things I have to emotionally cope with and handle have been increasing, even if it’s small things and I did not know how to handle them.  I get so overwhelmed so easily and I just have been feeling like I have been falling apart for the last while.

I have been seeing my psychologist and she is helping me to try and get my brain to handle things, but it’s really very hard.  Once you have lived a certain way for 38 years it is really hard to change how your brain works and thinks….

I have been taking it day by day sometimes.

I remember how I used to be so organized, prim and proper. I felt very in control of things.  When I look back on those times and remember how I was, I want to cry as I so wish I could be like that again.  I miss that feeling of accomplishment and control. Not a thing in my home was out of place. My “to-do” list was practically non-existent.

But that was when life was so much more simple. I was not a wife, not a mother, not a daughter taking care of her mother, didn’t have an autistic child that I have to fight for, hadn’t lost a child, not maintaining a home, not building a business…

Now all of those things have happened and are a part of my life. They are on-going. I don’t want to change them (except losing Katie, that I would change in a split second!), I just want to change how well I am coping with everything. How well I am coping with my life…

I guess the biggest one is losing Katie. That is obviously the one that has affected me the most.  That made my brain crumble and it changed the way my brain handles things.  I have done a lot of therapy for losing my daughter, but it is only something I can move forward with and never fully recover from.

I am not sure of how my brain would handle these situations in my life if I had not experienced this loss. I don’t know if I would be coping with all of the other things better if I hadn’t gone through this loss. I will never know.

What I do know is that I want to learn how to be able to get through my days and life better.  Juli takes a lot of my energy and brain power right now.  Now understand this and it is probably the most important thing I will ever say: I WOULD NOT CHANGE A THING ABOUT JULI. I love her more than life itself JUST THE WAY SHE IS.  She would not be my Juli if she was different.

I want/need to tweak ME.  I say tweak and not change because I don’t need to change how or who I am. I am an Aspie. Meaning I have Asperger’s Syndrome and I am fine with that as it’s who I am.  I need to tweak parts of me and teach myself how to better cope with all the things in my life that I have going on and I need to handle.

I want to learn how to be able to get up and tackle each day day with a clear head on my shoulders and not be exhausted by all of the super fast thoughts running through my head.  I want to go through each day without my stomach piled high with anxiety… I want to have the mental energy to do what I need to get done and to live as normal a life (like everyone I know does) as possible for me.

Right now I have so much anxiety in me that it is controlling me.  I don’t want to be this way.  I know that adults with Asperger’s have some of the highest amounts of anxiety compared to most people.  Our anxiety can be off the charts as they say.  This is part of what stops me from coping.  Maybe a lot of what stops me….

This anxiety makes my brain spin at incredible rates and all that goes through my mind are all of the things that I am worried about. Things that possibly the average person would not even think about or barely think about.  But those thoughts are constantly zooming though my mind over and over again and it makes it hard to focus on anything else.  I can get to the point of not being able to think of anything else as I have such high anxiety.

So no matter what I am doing my stomach is always in knots and thoughts in my brain are always going.

This is everyday life for me.  When your brain is going with anxiety and worrying so much, it is hard to have the mental energy and concentration to do much in your day.

I have work on being able to get a couple things done in my day that are extra. I can get up, make the bed, feed Juli and the animals, get Juli to and from school, tidy the place and figure out supper as these are the usual everyday things. But when it comes to things on top of that is where I find it hard. Especially things outside the home. I have to focus on doing other things that I want/need to do. I have to put in my head something I want to do and not stop thinking about it other wise I won’t be able to hold it in my head and if not I will not be able to get the energy to get it done.

I don’t like being this way. I want to be more like my old self that was able to get things done.  That is what I am working towards right now :).